Incredible moment daredevil Aussie fishermen catch massive 14 foot TIGER SHARK off tourist beach
The pair do not kill the animals they catch and claim they try not to cause too much stress
These Aussie fishermen don't need to exaggerate their catch of the day because they landed a massive 14-foot TIGER SHARK off a tourist beach.
Famed anglers Jethro Bonnitcha, 30, and Joshua Butterworth, 29, managed to hook an impressive 10 tiger sharks in just a four-day fishing trip - and they didn't even need a bigger boat to do it.
Jethro 'Jet' and Josh, from Esperance, Western Australia, baited lines 300 feet from the beach and waited for the massive predators to take a bite.
During their most recent trip to a beach around 500 miles north of Perth the pair managed to beat their personal bests for landing the magnificent fish.
They were fishing at the beginning of June in one of their favourite spots which they like to keep secret.
Jet said taking on a big tiger shark from a beach was no picnic.
"When you hook a big one, when they actually decide to go and they're taking you on, it feels like you've hooked a car, a solid weight," he said.
"You get pulled down to the water and then they'll turn their head and you'll come back up the beach and then they'll go again and pull you back towards the water.
"It's a full-on tug-o-war. Bringing in the four-metre shark was pretty awesome because we could see as soon as I hooked it and it came to the surface.
"And we could see its tail come out of the water and then it putting its head out of the water, we could see how big it was so we knew it was going to be a new personal best.
Speaking of the tug-o-war with the shark, Jet said: "It was bloody exciting, he wasn't giving anything."
"As you can see from the pictures of the sharks, we try not to even get them fully out of the water at all. Because a few studies show they can get a few injuries.
"Once they are in they are a little bit tired but we know how to work around them. Like any animal you spend enough time with them you learn to know them.
"If it's a horse having a kick or a shark having a thrash or a bite, you feel their muscles tense up and you go 'alright, it's time to jump back for second'.
"You can get aware of the body language of the shark, you can get quite close. Obviously you're not going to put his head on your lap but if you sit just behind the dorsal fin you can sit there without too much worry.
"I've had a few nicks from teeth, never bitten, but a lot of chaffing from them because their skin is really rough so you're usually left with a lot of skin shredded off from their sandpaper skin.
"You get some bruising from the tails because when they get big they've got enough power behind it, it'll bloody knock you over."
Jet and Josh specially select where they go fishing and work hard to make sure the animals don't suffer too much stress.
He said: "We go up there because there are such big numbers of sharks. We take a little inflatable boat or kayak and set up a good spot on the beach where there is no reef or rocks where the line can be cut.
"We paddle out fish bait, fish heads and things like that, and then drop the bait out with a piece of coral as a weight and then that's pretty much it, just sit and wait.
"There was nothing under 11-foot we were catching that day, from the research I've seen the sharks we catch are around four to seven-years-old.
"They are breeding size but still not fully grown because they can get up to six odd metres. But if you tangled with something that big you're probably not going to be able to pull it into a beach.
"The biggest one I caught on this trip was the biggest tiger I've ever caught, on a previous trip I caught a bigger hammerhead. As far as we know both the tiger and the hammerhead are the biggest caught off a beach in Australia.
"The tiger was a bit over four metres, or 14 foot."
Jethro said he and Joshua had probably caught over 1,000 sharks during their trips off the Western Australian coast and that their biggest priority was the safety and health of the animals.
He said: "We catch sharks but we don't like to kill things, we try to encourage people to do the same thing and let the fish go. We obviously want them to be around for years to come.
"Some people think all we're doing is catching and killing them but that's not true. We want to show people what we do and there are certain ways of catching the sharks to bring them in with the least stress possible.
"For example some people take two hours to bring a shark in because they use a light line, but we use heavy gear and get them in within 10 to 15 minutes to minimise stress on the animals.
"It's a bit harder on us obviously because you've got to use your full body weight and give it to them but that's what we do so we can try and get them in as quick as possible and get them away with as much energy as possible.
"We're also getting tagging on the go because there has been some debate about the survival of the sharks so we can get some proper data on it all.
"Obviously if the sharks are not surviving we don't want to be doing it, we are not doing it to kill things. We're doing it because we enjoy the sport.
"There are shark tagging programmes that take the whole animal out of the water onto a platform and those sharks survive, so that shouldn't be any different to what we're doing."